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Monday, May 4, 2015

In
the mountains above Fresno, a slim, beautiful wild plum has taken
root in a newly cleared meadow. No one planted the tree. It simply
sprouted on its own, once the overgrowth was pushed out by Native
Americans working to revitalize the forest.

The
blooming presence of this sapling stands as testimony to what can be
done to not only restore a meadow but to thin the forest and thereby
bring more water down from the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

More Water

Experts have been talking for years about thinning California's
forests to enhance the water supply downstream. No one knows exactly
how much more water the Sierras could produce if the dense
undergrowth was removed, but it's a lot – two, three, up to 16 percent (p.2) or more, of current yield. While estimates vary, most reflect
a recognition that reversing the century's old habit of suppressing
fire in the watershed is critically needed.

“Failure
to understand the urgency of the situation in the Sierra Nevada will
have devastating impacts on California's environment and economy,”
warns the Sierra Nevada Conservancy in a new report on the need for
prescribed burns and thinning in the forests.

The Conservancy, a
state agency, was referring mainly to the risk of huge wild fires,
like those that have been growing in size every year. But authors of
the report, The State of the Sierra Nevada's Forests, also
estimate that up to 60 percent of snowfall never reaches the ground
because the tree canopy is too thick. Much of that snow then
evaporates and never reaches downstream use. On the other hand, when
wildfires rip through the forest, they take out every tree and
nothing is left to shade the new snow, which again is lost to the air
and early melting.

A
golden mean is needed – some trees, but not too many, and a forest
cleared of dense underbrush so that when fire does come, it stays on
the ground. A wet meadow, for its part, acts to control the wild
fire. It is the forest's sponge, holding water late in the year and
releasing it slowly into streams and groundwater. Many, if not most,
of the Sierra's meadows have been degraded, no longer functioning as
sponges or sources of species diversity.

North Fork Mono Tribe chief Ron Goode has worked for
decades to revitalize his homeland with traditional knowledge of
prescribed burns and forest ecology. credit: Patricia McBroom

Ancient traditions

I
was in the Sierra National Forest, which surrounds the San Joaquin
River watershed, between Yosemite and Sequoia, to find out what the
North Fork Mono Tribe was doing to recover the health of the forest
there. It is their ancient homeland and while most of the several
thousand Indians – those who survived genocide – were driven out
of the mountains a century ago, many of them still carry traditional
knowledge of forest stewardship.

“Prior
to the arrival of Europeans, the use of fire by North Fork Mono and
other California Indian people enhanced plant and animal resources
and sustained a higher human population density than intensive,
seed-crop agriculture could have supported,” writes Jared Dahl Aldern, an environmental historian and co-director of the Stanford
University-based Comparative Wests Project.

Gardeners of the Forest

“These
were the gardeners of the forest,” said Douglas McKay, head
archaeologist of the Sierra National Forest's heritage program, as we
rumbled in a Forest Service jeep through the woods from meadow to
meadow. McKay explained that the several hundred thousand Indians who
originally lived there had maintained healthy forests with regular
controlled burns that preserved the meadows, increased the diversity
of species and protected against wild fire.

“We
need the gardeners to come back and start taking care of the land
again.” said McKay, adding that most of what scientists describe as
a “natural” forest with a clean understory was actually created
by Indians.

Wood and debris waiting to be removed after meadow restoration in the
Sierra National Forest. credit: Patricia McBroom

Seated
beside McKay in the jeep was one of those head gardeners, Ron Goode,
tribal chief of the North Fork Mono, a founding father of a movement
to help federal land managers understand the role of Native Americans
on the landscape. Goode has been prodding and poking for 30 odd
years to bring back traditional burning and native knowledge.

“A
good meadow has up to 55 species, including food, medicine and
other useful products,” said Goode. “This meadow was brown when
we started,” he said, pointing to a green space in the trees filled
with flowers and new grasses. “Before, all we had was thistles and
brush. Now we have bees, flowers and plants. The water is providing
for all of that.” Goode
is participating in the Dinkey Creek collaborative, an effort to
restore 154,000 acres in Sierra National Forest with thinning and
meadow revitalization. It's one of the larger Forest Service projects
in California, representing about 10 percent of this national forest
(1.3 million acres). But it's a drop in the bucket, compared to what
needs to be done.

Benefits of Forest Restoration

In
a large scientific review of water supply benefits, the Nature
Conservancy recently estimated that tripling the pace of current
forest restoration would result in up to a six percent increase in
the mean annual streamflow from individual watersheds. The restoration would pay for itself in these water benefits, the non-profit conservation group concluded.

Sierra National Forest has 1.3 million acres, half of which is
in need of thinning; the rest is protected wilderness areas.credit: US Forest Service

Yet,
the Forest Service is crippled by loss of personnel due to
Congressional cutbacks. Controlled burning usually can't be done
because of resistance by air pollution boards, or public
misunderstanding. Moreover, the forests are now so choked with
flammable material that a prescribed burn could easily turn wild.
And it's dry and hot. And there's no money. Most
of the money that U.S. land management agencies such as the Forest
Service or the Bureau of Land Management have early in the year for
proactive management is swallowed up later by the need to fight fire.

The Karma of Doing Nothing

“Pick
your smoke.” says the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, in advocating for
controlled burns. Adds McKay, “Mother nature will do it if we
don't and you will not like the result.”

What
then can we do? If government agencies can only respond to crisis
management of wild fire, there will be little effort to fix the
State's crucial watershed – the magnificent mountain range that
stretches 400 miles from Bakersfield to the Oregon border which is
the source of 60 percent of our developed water supply. Moreover,
climate change is reducing the snow pack to a frightening degree;
there is an urgent need to make the best use of what falls from the
sky.

Against
these odds, McKay is optimistic. “We have the ability to fix this
problem, but we need some funding,” he said. McKay wants to see
tribal people employed in a modern day Conservation Corps to
initially clear the forest of its dangerous overgrowth by mechanical
means, then maintain a clean forest with low-intensity prescribed
burns every few years.

Native
Americans lived in and maintained the Sierra Nevada mountains with
such burns for more than 9,000 years until European contact. We
could do worse than use their knowledge. The small burns not only
kept wild fire under control, but they were necessary to maintain the
ecological health of a wide variety of animal and plant species.
Giant Sequoia trees, for instance, require periodic fire to
regenerate and are at risk from fire suppression. Sierra meadows are primary resting places for millions of migratory birds on the Pacific flyway.

Collaboration and Money

But
are there enough Indians to do the job? “There are plenty of
Indians,” replied Goode. Some 6,000 Indians from 13 tribes still
live in or near the Sierra National Forest, with many more thousands
further north. “Anyway, all you need is one, who knows what he's
doing.” Young Americans of all backgrounds could then be employed
to serve the nation under a collaborative effort by many
organizations including tribes.

That
is exactly what the Forest Service is trying to put together now.
The Dinkey Creek Landscape Restoration Project, for example, involves
30 different organizations – state, federal, non-governmental,
private and Indian – which have so far thinned thousands of acres
of forest and are preparing to restore the meadows.

“We
need to be putting together more of these collaborative groups,”
said McKay. “All we need is the money.”

About Me

Journalist/anthropologist; author of two books, former science and magazine writer with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Published "The Third Sex," on women adapting to formerly all-male career roles in the financial districts of New York and San Francisco in 1986 with wide reviews.
As professor, taught courses on women and work at UC Berkeley, Mills College, Rutgers University and Diablo Valley College. Affiliated with the California Studies Association at UC Berkeley.